Saturday, March 24, 2012

This Study Shows that Even a Protein’s Concentration Levels Are Finely-Tuned

One of the problems with evolution is that its view of how organisms arose by chance conflicts with the details we observe in biology. Under evolution, chance mutations happen to create genes which then perform some function, such as contributing to a metabolic pathway, which then becomes part of a complex network of pathways, which then is regulated in complex ways, which then …, which then …, which then …

What we observe is a world where the details matter. But evolution is a theory of serendipity. For example, it is beyond all odds that proteins would arise by chance, but this is only the beginning of evolution’s difficulties. The gene encoding the protein needs to be expressed at the right times, the resulting protein needs to be produced in the right quantities, it then needs to be transported to the right place in the cell, and so forth.

Here’s one study showing the intricacies not of a protein’s design, but of its distribution. In this case the concentration of a multi-purpose protein called cohesin within the cell is crucial.

Cohesin is involved in such tasks as chromosome condensation, segregation and cohesion, and DNA repair. But the concentration of cohesin required to perform these different tasks differs substantially. And if the concentration levels go wrong then some of the cell functions can fail while others may continue to work properly:

The requirement for different in vivo cohesin concentrations to achieve distinct cohesin functions provides an explanation for how cohesin mutations can specifically lead to adult disorders such as Cornelia de Lange Syndrome and Roberts Syndrome without compromising the cell divisions needed for development and maturation.

In biology, the details matter. Proteins do not merely evolve by chance and then suddenly begin solving problems. An army of other molecular machines need to sense the need for the protein, access the associated gene, open it up and make a copy, use the copy to construct the protein, construct the right quantity, transport the protein to the right place in the cell and in the right concentration, and destroy the protein when the job is done.

Could all of this have evolved by chance? I don’t know, perhaps. But that is not what science is telling us.

filtered chance is still chance. You guys like to pretend natural selection changes the fact that everything it selects for or against has to come about by chance. It doesn't really work like that. NS cannot replace a designer, sorry.

Evolution does have an element of chance (ie, the random mutations), but it is precisely the non-random mechanism of evolution which allows evolution to work.

Take a hundred dice. Roll the first one again and again until you get a six. Then move on and do the same thing with the second. Eventually all 100 dice will be sixes. Is that just 'chance'? Do we need to appeal to a supernatural to explain getting all-sixes on a hundred dice?

Evolution does have an element of chance (ie, the random mutations), but it is precisely the non-random mechanism of natural selection which allows evolution to work.

Take a hundred dice. Roll the first one again and again until you get a six. Then move on and do the same thing with the second. Eventually all 100 dice will be sixes. Is that just 'chance'? Do we need to appeal to a supernatural to explain getting all-sixes on a hundred dice?

Ritchie, I'm trying to see where you even actually addressed what Temi stated. For crying out loud you just illustrated the point Temi made by using a selection process where a human was selecting dice. ,,, As well the dice Natural Selection must work with is far greater than a 6 sided die, it is a 10^77 sided die that must be rolled before selection can set in.,,, The house is definitely favored in that bet! :)

Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on the Empirical Problems with Neo-Darwinism - Casey Luskin - February 27, 2012Excerpt: "In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of 'natural selection' in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely 'scientific' and 'rational,' they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word 'chance', not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word 'miracle.'" Wolfgang Pauli (pp. 27-28) -http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/nobel_prize-win056771.html

Ritchie, I'm trying to see where you even actually addressed what Temi stated.

That just tells me you haven't understood what I said at all.

I was demonstrating the power of CUMULATIVE selection - an essential component of evolution which is entirely lost when ID-ers refer to it as a random process.

For crying out loud you just illustrated the point Temi made by using a selection process where a human was selecting dice.

Don't be ridiculous. The outcome of each throw of every dice is down to nothing but chance.

As well the dice Natural Selection must work with is far greater than a 6 sided die, it is a 10^77 sided die that must be rolled before selection can set in.

But the logic doesn't change. If these were 10-sided dice the logic would hold. You would just sit there rolling each dice in turn again and again until you got a 6 (or whatever number you had chosen) and then moved on to the next. The logic is exactly the same if these dice have 10 sides, 1,000 sides or indeed 10^77 sides. The argument does not collapse just because the odds become longer.

Besides, I don't think that 10^77 is right. I don't know where you're plucking that number from. But that's kinda tangental.

How about if it becomes completely impossible for the material processes of neo-Darwinism to explain what we find in the cell in the first place?

Falsification Of Neo-Darwinism by Quantum Entanglement/Informationhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1p8AQgqFqiRQwyaF8t1_CKTPQ9duN8FHU9-pV4oBDOVs/edit?hl=en_US

A few notes on the 10^77 odds you so nonchalantly dismissed as inconsequential:

Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds: Doug Axe:Excerpt: this implies the overall prevalence of sequences performing a specific function by any domain-sized fold may be as low as 1 in 10^77, adding to the body of evidence that functional folds require highly extraordinary sequences.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723

But perhaps Ritchie you say that is just creationists tripe: Well,,

Proteins Did Not Evolve Even According to the Evolutionist’s Own Calculations but so What, Evolution is a Fact - Cornelius Hunter - July 2011Excerpt: For instance, in one case evolutionists concluded that the number of evolutionary experiments required to evolve their protein (actually it was to evolve only part of a protein and only part of its function) is 10^70 (a one with 70 zeros following it). Yet elsewhere evolutionists computed that the maximum number of evolutionary experiments possible is only 10^43. Even here, giving the evolutionists every advantage, evolution falls short by 27 orders of magnitude.http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2011/07/response-to-comments-proteins-did-not.html

But actually the problem is much worse for neo-Darwinists for the previous paper are only dealing with a finding a single specific protein domain, Whereas,,

The Case Against a Darwinian Origin of Protein Folds - Douglas Axe - 2010Excerpt Pg. 11: "Based on analysis of the genomes of 447 bacterial species, the projected number of different domain structures per species averages 991. Comparing this to the number of pathways by which metabolic processes are carried out, which is around 263 for E. coli, provides a rough figure of three or four new domain folds being needed, on average, for every new metabolic pathway. In order to accomplish this successfully, an evolutionary search would need to be capable of locating sequences that amount to anything from one in 10^159 to one in 10^308 possibilities, something the neo-Darwinian model falls short of by a very wide margin."http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.1

As well, the time for finding novel proteins and/or domains has now been dramatically shortened:

Genomes of similar species - Cornelius Hunter PhD.Excerpt:As one science writer put it, “an astonishing 12 per cent of recently evolved genes in fruit flies appear to have evolved from scratch.” [10] These so-called novel genes would have had to have evolved over a few million years—a time period previously considered to allow only for minor genetic changes. [11,12] ,,, etc.. etc…http://www.darwinspredictions.com/#_4.2_Genomes_of

‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ - Stephen Meyer - (excerpt taken from Meyer/Sternberg vs. Shermer/Prothero debate - 2009)

How about if it becomes completely impossible for the material processes of neo-Darwinism to explain what we find in the cell in the first place?

No, that's 'It's complex, therefore design', which is still fallacious.

A few notes on the 10^77 odds you so nonchalantly dismissed as inconsequential

But that would not be represented by an individual dice. That would be represented by the whole chain of a 100 dice. These protein sequences are formed through cumulative, not single-step, selection. That was my whole point.

And the rest is just waffle from Cornelius and Stephen Meyer, both of whom just peddle ID in place of doing any actual science.

If you ever actually got your scientific information from a SCIENTIFIC source rather than an entirely religious one, you might just realise why people think Creationism is bonkers.

How about if it becomes completely impossible for the material processes of neo-Darwinism to explain what we find in the cell in the first place?

No, that's 'It's complex, therefore design', which is still fallacious.

A few notes on the 10^77 odds you so nonchalantly dismissed as inconsequential

But that would not be represented by an individual dice. That would be represented by the whole chain of a 100 dice. These protein sequences are formed through cumulative, not single-step, selection. That was my whole point.

And the rest is just waffle from Cornelius and Stephen Meyer, both of whom just peddle ID in place of doing any actual science.

If you ever actually got your scientific information from a SCIENTIFIC source rather than an entirely religious one, you might just realise why people think Creationism is bonkers.

'No, that's 'It's complex, therefore design', which is still fallacious.'

Ritchie, I did not say highly unlikely for the material processes of neo-Darwinism to explain what we find in the cell, I said COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE for the material processes of neo-Darwinism to explain what we find in the cell,,, and that is exactly what finding quantum information in the cell is to neo-Darwinian processes,,, COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE,,, But don't worry Ritchie. just ignore it. call us IDiots. or whatever slur is popular right now. act like you even have a clue. i.e. Move Along nothing to see here folks;

Neo-Darwinian evolution purports to explain all the wondrously amazing complexity of life on earth by reference solely to chance and necessity processes acting on energy and matter (i.e. purely material processes). In fact neo-Darwinian evolution makes the grand materialistic claim that the staggering levels of unmatched complex functional information we find in life, and even the ‘essence of life’ itself, simply ‘emerged’ from purely material processes. And even though this basic scientific point, of the ability of purely material processes to generate even trivial levels of complex functional information, has spectacularly failed to be established, we now have a much greater proof, than this stunning failure for validation, that ‘put the lie’ to the grand claims of neo-Darwinian evolution. This proof comes from the fact that it is now shown from quantum mechanics that ‘information’ is its own unique ‘physical’ entity. A physical entity that is shown to be completely independent of any energy-matter space-time constraints, i.e. it does not ‘emerge’ from a material basis. Moreover this ‘transcendent information’ is shown to be dominant of energy-matter in that this ‘information’ is shown to be the entity that is in fact constraining the energy-matter processes of the cell to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium.

notes:

Falsification of neo-Darwinism;

First, Here is the falsification of local realism (reductive materialism).Here is a clip of a talk in which Alain Aspect talks about the failure of ‘local realism’, or the failure of reductive materialism, to explain reality:

The falsification for local realism (reductive materialism) was recently greatly strengthened:

Physicists close two loopholes while violating local realism – November 2010Excerpt: The latest test in quantum mechanics provides even stronger support than before for the view that nature violates local realism and is thus in contradiction with a classical worldview.http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-physicists-loopholes-violating-local-realism.html

Quantum Measurements: Common Sense Is Not Enough, Physicists Show – July 2009Excerpt: scientists have now proven comprehensively in an experiment for the first time that the experimentally observed phenomena cannot be described by non-contextual models with hidden variables.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090722142824.htm

In fact the foundation of quantum mechanics within science is now so solid that researchers were able to bring forth this following proof from quantum entanglement experiments;

An experimental test of all theories with predictive power beyond quantum theory – May 2011Excerpt: Hence, we can immediately refute any already considered or yet-to-be-proposed alternative model with more predictive power than this. (Quantum Theory)http://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.0133.pdf

Now this is completely unheard of in science as far as I know. i.e. That a mathematical description of reality would advance to the point that one can actually perform a experiment showing that your current scientific theory will not be exceeded in predictive power by another future scientific theory is simply unprecedented in science!

Further falsification of ‘local’ realism, without even using quantum entanglement to do it, was achieved here;

'Quantum Magic' Without Any 'Spooky Action at a Distance' - June 2011Excerpt: A team of researchers led by Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences used a system which does not allow for entanglement, and still found results which cannot be interpreted classically.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110624111942.htm

Falsification of Local Realism without using Quantum Entanglement - Anton Zeilinger - videohttp://vimeo.com/34168474

of note: hidden variables were postulated to remove the need for ‘spooky’ forces, as Einstein termed them — forces that act instantaneously at great distances, thereby breaking the most cherished rule of relativity theory, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This following video illustrates just how 'spooky', to use Einstein’s infamous word, this quantum action truly is:

And yet, this ‘spooky’ quantum entanglement, which rigorously falsified local realism (reductive materialism) as the ‘true’ description of reality, is now found in molecular biology on a massive scale!

Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint – 2010Excerpt: When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA’s helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours (arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1). “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford.http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/

The relevance of continuous variable entanglement in DNA – July 2010Excerpt: We consider a chain of harmonic oscillators with dipole-dipole interaction between nearest neighbours resulting in a van der Waals type bonding. The binding energies between entangled and classically correlated states are compared. We apply our model to DNA. By comparing our model with numerical simulations we conclude that entanglement may play a crucial role in explaining the stability of the DNA double helix.http://arxiv.org/abs/1006.4053v1

Quantum Entanglement/Information is confirmed in DNA by direct observation here;

DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows – June 2011Excerpt: — DNA — can discern between quantum states known as spin. – The researchers fabricated self-assembling, single layers of DNA attached to a gold substrate. They then exposed the DNA to mixed groups of electrons with both directions of spin. Indeed, the team’s results surpassed expectations: The biological molecules reacted strongly with the electrons carrying one of those spins, and hardly at all with the others. The longer the molecule, the more efficient it was at choosing electrons with the desired spin, while single strands and damaged bits of DNA did not exhibit this property.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110331104014.htm

Coherent Intrachain energy migration at room temperature - Elisabetta Collini & Gregory Scholes - University of Toronto - Science, 323, (2009), pp. 369-73Excerpt: The authors conducted an experiment to observe quantum coherence dynamics in relation to energy transfer. The experiment, conducted at room temperature, examined chain conformations, such as those found in the proteins of living cells. Neighbouring molecules along the backbone of a protein chain were seen to have coherent energy transfer. Where this happens quantum decoherence (the underlying tendency to loss of coherence due to interaction with the environment) is able to be resisted, and the evolution of the system remains entangled as a single quantum state.http://www.scimednet.org/quantum-coherence-living-cells-and-protein/

Quantum states in proteins and protein assemblies:The essence of life? - STUART HAMEROFF, JACK TUSZYNSKIExcerpt: It is, in fact, the hydrophobic effect and attractions among non-polar hydrophobic groups by van der Waals forces which drive protein folding. Although the confluence of hydrophobic side groups are small, roughly 1/30 to 1/250 of protein volumes, they exert enormous influence in the regulation of protein dynamics and function. Several hydrophobic pockets may work cooperatively in a single protein (Figure 2, Left). Hydrophobic pockets may be considered the “brain” or nervous system of each protein.,,, Proteins, lipids and nucleic acids are composed of constituent molecules which have both non-polar and polar regions on opposite ends. In an aqueous medium the non-polar regions of any of these components will join together to form hydrophobic regions where quantum forces reign.http://www.tony5m17h.net/SHJTQprotein.pdf

Myosin CoherenceExcerpt: Quantum physics and molecular biology are two disciplines that have evolved relatively independently. However, recently a wealth of evidence has demonstrated the importance of quantum mechanics for biological systems and thus a new field of quantum biology is emerging. Living systems have mastered the making and breaking of chemical bonds, which are quantum mechanical phenomena. Absorbance of frequency specific radiation (e.g. photosynthesis and vision), conversion of chemical energy into mechanical motion (e.g. ATP cleavage) and single electron transfers through biological polymers (e.g. DNA or proteins) are all quantum mechanical effects.http://www.energetic-medicine.net/bioenergetic-articles/articles/63/1/Myosin-Coherence/Page1.html

Persistent dynamic entanglement from classical motion: How bio-molecular machines can generate non-trivial quantum states - November 2011Excerpt: We also show how conformational changes can be used by an elementary machine to generate entanglement even in unfavorable conditions. In biological systems, similar mechanisms could be exploited by more complex molecular machines or motors.http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.2126

Here is a analysis of the preceding paper:

Testing quantum entanglement in proteinExcerpt: The authors remark that this reverses the previous orthodoxy, which held that quantum effects could not exist in biological systems because of the amount of noise in these systems.,,, Environmental noise here drives a persistent and cyclic generation of new entanglement.,,, In summary, the authors say that they have demonstrated that entanglement can recur even in a hot noisy environment. In biological systems this can be related to changes in the conformation of macromolecules.http://www.quantum-mind.co.uk/testing-quantum-entanglement-in-protein-c288.html

The necessity of 'transcendent' information, to ‘constrain’ a cell, against thermodynamic effects is noted here:

Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? A.C. McINTOSHExcerpt: This paper highlights the distinctive and non-material nature of information and its relationship with matter, energy and natural forces. It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate.http://journals.witpress.com/paperinfo.asp?pid=420

i.e. It is very interesting to note, to put it mildly, that quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its pure ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints, should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, for how can the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy space/time) ’cause’ when the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ falsified material particles as its own ‘causation’ in the first place? (A. Aspect) Appealing to the probability of various configurations of material particles, as neo-Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the energy/matter particles themselves to supply! To give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space! i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain a effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘specified’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place!,,,To refute this falsification of neo-Darwinism, one must overturn Alain Aspect, and company’s, falsification of local realism (reductive materialism) !https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p8AQgqFqiRQwyaF8t1_CKTPQ9duN8FHU9-pV4oBDOVs/edit?hl=en_US

Neo-Darwinian evolution purports to explain all the wondrously amazing complexity of life on earth by reference solely to chance and necessity processes acting on energy and matter (i.e. purely material processes).

Well there you go. An error in the very first sentence.

ToE is NOT random chance. How many times must this point be made before it sinks in?

And even though this basic scientific point, of the ability of purely material processes to generate even trivial levels of complex functional information, has spectacularly failed to be established

This proof comes from the fact that it is now shown from quantum mechanics that ‘information’ is its own unique ‘physical’ entity. A physical entity that is shown to be completely independent of any energy-matter space-time constraints, i.e. it does not ‘emerge’ from a material basis.

Oh dear.

I love it when Creationists try to employ science they don't understand at all because they think it sounds like it supports their point.

I could go into details, but suffice it to say that quantum mechanics, despite being almost unfathomably complicated, is still entirely naturalistic. You are trying to suggest quantum mechanics implies the supernatural, but it does not. It is just a very complicated area of study, granted, but it is still science.

Absolutely nothing at all that you gave given in that 4-post wall of links and quotes remotely supports the point I asked you to support.

Ritchie, you claim that I merely said random chance but I said 'chance and necessity' processes acting on energy and matter (i.e. purely material processes). i.e. 'random' variation and natural selection i.e. as the great evolutionist Jacques Monod put it, Chance and Necessity. ,,, Thus Ritchie you are either not reading what I wrote or you don't even understand the hypothesis you support.,, Ritchie you then go on to claim that Lenski's e-coli demonstrate that Chance and Necessity (Random Variation and Natural Selection) can generate non-trivial levels of functional information, yet once again the actual truth is found to be counter to your claim,,

Mutations : when benefits level off - June 2011 - (Lenski's e-coli after 50,000 generations)Excerpt: After having identified the first five beneficial mutations combined successively and spontaneously in the bacterial population, the scientists generated, from the ancestral bacterial strain, 32 mutant strains exhibiting all of the possible combinations of each of these five mutations. They then noted that the benefit linked to the simultaneous presence of five mutations was less than the sum of the individual benefits conferred by each mutation individually.http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/1867.htm?theme1=7

Thus Ritchie you clearly do not understand the results of Lenski's e-coli or you are being deliberately misleading. Which is it?

'I could go into details, but suffice it to say that quantum mechanics, despite being almost unfathomably complicated, is still entirely naturalistic. You are trying to suggest quantum mechanics implies the supernatural, but it does not. It is just a very complicated area of study, granted, but it is still science.'

Well actually I wish you would give a few details. Since you seem to think that you understand it and we poor creationists don't. Perhaps you would care to explain Wigner's symmetries, or Wheeler's delayed choice, or Leggett's inequalities?

"Thus one decides the photon shall have come by one route or by both routes after it has already done its travel" John A. Wheeler

Wheeler's Classic Delayed Choice Experiment: We have delayed this choice until a time long after the particles "have passed by one side of the galaxy, or the other side of the galaxy, or both sides of the galaxy," so to speak. Yet, it seems paradoxically that our later choice of whether to obtain this information determines which side of the galaxy the light passed, so to speak, billions of years ago. So it seems that time has nothing to do with effects of quantum mechanics. And, indeed, the original thought experiment was not based on any analysis of how particles evolve and behave over time – it was based on the mathematics. This is what the mathematics predicted for a result, and this is exactly the result obtained in the laboratory.http://www.bottomlayer.com/bottom/basic_delayed_choice.htm

“I’m going to talk about the Bell inequality, and more importantly a new inequality that you might not have heard of called the Leggett inequality, that was recently measured. It was actually formulated almost 30 years ago by Professor Leggett, who is a Nobel Prize winner, but it wasn’t tested until about a year and a half ago (in 2007), when an article appeared in Nature, that the measurement was made by this prominent quantum group in Vienna led by Anton Zeilinger, which they measured the Leggett inequality, which actually goes a step deeper than the Bell inequality and rules out any possible interpretation other than consciousness creates reality when the measurement is made.” – Bernard Haisch, Ph.D., Calphysics Institute, is an astrophysicist and author of over 130 scientific publications.

Preceding quote taken from this following video;

Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness - A New Measurement - Bernard Haisch, Ph.D (Shortened version of entire video with notes in description of video)http://vimeo.com/37517080

"It will remain remarkable, in whatever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality" -Eugene Wigner - (Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, Eugene Wigner, in Wheeler and Zurek, p.169) - received Nobel Prize in 1963 for 'Quantum Symmetries'http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/wigner/

I think Wigner would be very pleased with our 'future concepts';

An experimental test of all theories with predictive power beyond quantum theory – May 2011Excerpt: Hence, we can immediately refute any already considered or yet-to-be-proposed alternative model with more predictive power than this. (Quantum Theory)http://arxiv.org/pdf/1105.0133.pdf

Thus we have at least three different intersecting lines of experimental evidence which all converge to this one conclusion;

1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality. 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kpDwWetu66fBRlPM7zjA5BpHzcu5wBY7AdB7gOz51OQ/edit

I've often thought the context problem is bigger for proteins than the problem of simply folding or catalyzing some reaction. The simple fact that proteins often stick to their other side in dimers, trimers, etc. instead of many other proteins is actually quite fascinating. It's as if one side of the protein is a specification for the other side, or for the proteins it interacts with.

What this study shows is that this protein's concentration levels are hard to vary, not that they were finely tuned. What you're assuming isn't evident from observations alone.

As such, it's unclear how you can claim to be "theory neutral" on this issue. In fact, it's unclear how anyone can be theory neutral I regards to any observation, let alone this particular observation.

Cornelius G. Hunter is a graduate of the University of Illinois where
he earned a Ph.D. in Biophysics and Computational Biology. He is
Adjunct Professor at Biola University and author of the award-winning Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil. Hunter’s other books include Darwin’s Proof, and his newest book Science’s Blind Spot
(Baker/Brazos Press). Dr. Hunter's interest in the theory of evolution
involves the historical and theological, as well as scientific, aspects
of the theory. His website is http://www.darwins-god.blogspot.com/